Coming Through Slaughter - Michael Ondaatje [10]
But there was a discipline, it was just that we didn’t understand. We thought he was formless, but I think now he was tormented by order, what was outside it. He tore apart the plot—see his music was immediately on top of his own life. Echoing. As if, when he was playing he was lost and hunting for the right accidental notes. Listening to him was like talking to Coleman. You were both changing direction with every sentence, sometimes in the middle, using each other as a springboard through the dark. You were moving so fast it was unimportant to finish and clear everything. He would be describing something in 27 ways. There was pain and gentleness everything jammed into each number.
Where did he come from? He was found before we knew where he had come from. Born at the age of twenty-two. Walked into a parade one day with white shoes and red shirt. Never spoke of the past. Simply about which way to go for the next 10 minutes.
God I was at that first parade, I was playing, it was a very famous entrance you know. He walks out of the crowd, struggles through onto the street and begins playing, too loud but real and strong you couldn’t deny him, and then he went back into the crowd. Then fifteen minutes later, 300 yards down the street, he jumps through the crowd onto the street again, plays, and then goes off. After two or three times we were waiting for him and he came.
Shell Beach Station. From the end of the track he watched Crawley and the rest of the band get on the train. They were still half-looking around for him to join them from someplace, even now. He stood by a mail wagon and watched them. He watched himself getting onto the train with them, the fake anger relief on their part. He watched himself go back to the Brewitts and ask if he could stay with them. The silent ones. Post music. After ambition. As he watched Crawley lift his great weight up onto the train he could see himself live with the Brewitts for years and years. He did not have any baggage with him, just the mouthpiece in his pocket. He could step on the train or go back to the Brewitts. He was frozen. He woke to see the train disappearing away from his body like a vein. He continued to stand hiding behind the mail wagon. Help me. He was scared of everybody. He didn’t want to meet anybody he knew again, ever in his life.
He left the station, went down to the small loin district of Shell Beach. Bought beer and listened to poor jazz in the halls. Listening hard so he was playing all the good notes in his brain his mouth flourishing whenever the players missed or avoided them. Had a dollar, less now. Enough for seven beers. Wearing his red shirt black trousers shoes. Stayed in the halls the whole day avoiding the bright afternoon sun which he could see past the open door of the bar, watching the band get replaced by others, ignoring the pick-ups who stroked his neck as they passed the tables. Dead crowd around him. He sat frozen. Then when his money was finished he went down to the shore and slept. Tried to sleep anyway, listening to the others there talk—where to hustle, the weather in Gretna. He took it in and locked it. In the morning, he stole some fruit and walked the roads. Went into a crowded barber shop and sat there comfortable but didn’t allow himself to be shaved walking out when it was his turn. Always listening, listening to the wet fluid speech with no order, unfinished stories, badly told jokes that he sober as a spider perfected in silence.
For two days picking